Certain doors, particularly fire stop doors found in exit stairways of residential or commercial buildings, must be kept closed at all times due to fire and safety regulations. Many of the stairways, however, are naturally or manually pressurized or vented to be sure that in a fire or other hazardous situation, the occupants of the building can escape by means of the stairway with relatively clean air.
Although such changes to residential and commercial buildings have improved life and safety of the occupants, it has created a different problem. Because the stairways are often at a different air pressure than that found on the other side of the stairway door, doors can be nearly impossible to open in the case of a greater air pressure on the backside of the door. In order to combat this, installers or maintenance people often increase the closer pressure on the automated door closer mechanism to such a high value that the door shuts with such force that someone may be caught off guard and hurt by the force of the closing door. Indeed, it is often nearly impossible for elderly or handicapped individuals to operate such doors because of the fact that they are so difficult to open and/or close so quickly and violently. This situation results from the fact that the air pressure acting on one side or the other of such a large, solid door or other opening tends to make the door either extremely difficult to open or closes it very quickly and abruptly.
Other situations also suffer from the same problem such as, for example, in the case of a storm door on a residential home which is generally difficult to close due to the pressure that builds up between the storm door and the main house door as the storm door closes. Often this results in the storm door not closing and latching completely which can result in the door being pulled open and maybe even pulled off by the wind.
Accordingly, what is needed is a method of providing an air vent in the door, window or other opening in a structure such that when the door begins to open, an air vent automatically opens whereby air pressure is allowed to equalize on both sides of the door yet once the door is closed, the air vents will close thus maintaining the fire integrity of the door.